picture of human infirmity.

Such, only, have fully

realized the importance of their office.

In regard to acquiring perfection in the dramatic art in general, as well as for a logical and æsthetic training in declamation, I refer to the writings of Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, and others. My object in this work has only been to write a gymnastic of the voice for speakers and singers; that is, a guide based on physiological laws for the development and correct use of the physical organs, combined with a system of correct and practical breathing; and as language is intimately connected with this subject, I have something to say thereupon, but only so far as regards the production of the different vowel and consonantal sounds.

CHAPTER I.

VOICE AND SPEECH.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION AND DEFINITIONS.

HUMAN language consists of sounds (tones), or modifications of the sounds, of noises combined with sounds, and of noises without any sound (tone).

The sounds are the human voice; the modifications of the sounds are the vowels; the noises combined with sounds (tones) are the sounding consonants; and the noises without any sound are the voiceless consonants. (Particulars given in Part III.)

Human language, therefore, originates from unarticulated sounds (tones), which, with help of certain organs, are changed in articulated sounds (words), or by a longer duration in singing tones.

Speech is the medium by which the mind of man communicates with the outer world. It is not our object to speak of this mode of communication, or of the mental processes required therefor, but of the bodily, material means, the organs, which man has received from God, at the hands of nature, for the

purpose of manifesting his mind, as also of their cultivation and correct use, in order that the mechanism of the organs of voice and speech may be understood.

The human vocal organ is the most perfect musical instrument imaginable. It can, by proper exercise, be improved and refined almost indefinitely from its originally crude condition. It possesses great endurance and power of resistance to external influences, and still it is only, so to speak, an accidental function, an addition to other important arrangements necessary to life, a small appendage to the respiratory apparatus, but using the entire large compass of the latter for its own purposes.

The elements of voice and speech are identical, and speech is distinguished from voice only by a different application of the same elements, and, furthermore, by the fact that the voice-joining these fundamental elements instinctively, accidentally and unsystematically-produces only the expression of the bodily impulses, impressions, and sensations, while speech unites, according to laws of thought and to certain well-defined principles, the same elements into syllables, these into words, the words into sentences, and thereby forms a strict order with the greatest variety.

Speech is, therefore, nothing but audible thought, and is as reason itself, the attribute of man alone

As voice is always, or almost always, intended for communication at a distance, the louder, further audible elements of voice-i. e., the vowels-preponderate; the weaker, hissing sounds (noises), which are necessary to speech, that is, to audible thought, are less frequently used. While, therefore, the sounding elements predominate in the voice, and the hissing sounds in speech, the signs of both appear united in song.

The tone is the same in speech as in song. Its manifestations in both cases can be made apparent in exactly the same manner, and a difference is to be found only in the duration of the sound. The voice is produced by the air contained in the lungs passing through the larynx, thereby inducing sounding vibrations of the vocal cords.

In speaking, the vocal cords vibrate only for a second; in the next moment the vibrations are interrupted by others. The sound first produced has, therefore, no time to make use, for its perfection, of all the means of consonance, etc. ; and, therefore, receives a feebler and emptier impress.

It is not thus with the sound of song. This mustand just here lies the most essential part of singing

be continued for quite a length of time. A sound in song, suddenly interrupted immediately after its beginning, no longer retains the character of a sound sung, but evidently that of one spoken.

The chief obstacle in the way of singers and orators, despite their good vocal organs, is ignorance of the correct use of the respiratory organs. Correct breathing, however, is the basis of speech as well as of song; for the voice, as much as speech, can originate only in and by the air expelled from the lungs.

Singing and speaking are, on the whole, only a branch of respiration, whose main function in life is the oxygenation of the blood and the production of animal heat. The inspired air, which, after performing this function, is expelled, has, nevertheless, been useful before mixing with the atmospheric air by acting as the motive power for the vocal cords, and by becoming a tone, the result of having been, in its return, set into a new vibratory movement.

The voice, then, is, as we have said, produced by the air contained in the lungs passing through the larynx, thereby inducing sounding vibrations of the vocal cords. If the voice is to be formed into words, we need, besides the respiratory organs and the larynx, those organs which are situated above the Jarynx, and to which the pharyngeal cavity, the nasal